Color video transmission is utilized in connection with many media forms, including cable television, the internet and for video conferencing purposes over high-speed digital transmission lines. In such cases, while the amount of bandwidth required for enabling the transmission of color video is large, the modes of transmission are typically capable of handling these bandwidth demands.
The demand for low cost video conferencing, such as for use in residences and the like, has been increasing. However, typical analog telephone lines, cellular telephone channels, and wireless links commonly used for portable devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), are not capable of handling high-speed transmission of video in color. Accordingly, color video transmissions, if even possible, are of poor quality and can be choppy and delayed, since the color video frames cannot be transmitted over the standard channels quickly enough.
Furthermore, even where high bandwidth channels are available, the demand for fill motion color video is high enough that multiple video “streams” often need to be transmitted over the same transmission channel. In this case, a reduction of the bandwidth of each video stream will permit a higher number of channels to be transmitted, thereby increasing the effective capacity of the total system.